The Universal Structure of Human Lexical Semantics

A new study explores how properties of organization and cognition in the human brain could be universal. Researchers focused on semantics, or ‘meaning expressed through language,’ and developed an empirical measure of how semantics might reflect cultural, historical, and environmental backgrounds. The results highlight a universal structure underlying the sampled vocabulary across different language groups and largely independent of geography or environment.

Schematic of a bipartite semantic network constructed through translation (first layer to second layer) and back-translation (second layer to third layer) for MOON and SUN in two American languages: Coast Tsimshian (red) and Lakhota (blue).Image credit: Youn et al. (2016).